>Now a variation on the four 7th chord excercise. This time start again
>with your diminished 7th chord and lower the Eb to D again, giving us
>the D7th. Now go back to the diminished 7th and move it up three frets
>to the 4th fret. (Your note on the 4th string will be Gb, aka F#) Most
>of you probably know diminished chords repeat on guitar every four
-------------------------------------------------------------->three
The three is three half steps == minor third. The diminished chord
symettrically divides the octave into four parts, each separated
by a minor third.
>frets. Now lower the Eb on the 2nd string, 4th fret 1/2 step to a D, and
>you have the next inversion of a D7th chord on that group of strings. Go
>back to the diminished and move it up another four frets to the 7th
---------------------------------------------->three
>fret. Lower the Eb on the 3rd string to a D and you have the next
>inversion of D7th. Last take the diminished to the 10th fret and lower
>the Eb on the 1st string to a D and you have your final inversion of
>D7th on those strings. Moving up another four frets to the 13th gives
----------------------------------------->three
>you the octave of your original chord. BTW, doing this excercise the two
>different ways is a principle that comes up repeatedly on guitar. Mick
>Goodrick calls it "one thing changes while the other stays the same".
>
>If you have diagrammed or already know these chords you can go the next
>level. If you raise the note C 1/2 step to C# in each of the D7th
>voicings you get four D major 7th chords. If you lower the F# in the
>four D7th voicings 1/2 step to F natural your convert each of these
>chords to a D minor 7th. From the Dm7 chords you obtained in the last
>example you can lower the A's 1/2 step to yield four Dm7th b5
>(half-diminished) chords. So, by using the diminished as a springboard
>you can easily work out the various types of 7th chords on the
>fingerboard. Next variation:
>
>In the first diminished chord we used to start this excercise the Gb
>flat is on the 1st string, 2nd fret. Now flip that note over to the 6th
>string (same fret) and you have an easy way to get more voicings using
>the same principle of lowering each of the tones 1/2 step.
>
>Before I go I'd like to suggest some advantages to doing things this
>way, not that I'm advocating doing it exclusively. First of all, with a
>little patience you can work out any basic chord you'll ever need (more
>on this with augmenteds later). Goodbye chord books. If you need a
>particular note in the treble for melody or in the bass for movement you
>have a way to figure this out. You can do this excercise on ANY four
>strings on the guitar. There are 14 different combinations of four
>strings, and often there is more than one way to form a diminished 7th
>on a given set of strings, so there are a bunch of chords that you can
>learn. Another advantage to this is using these voicings to relate your
>scales and melodies to. Lots of guitarists, from Charlie Christian to
>Pat use the underlying chord form (shape) as a reference for their
>improvising.
>
>Many of the techniques that I learned from Pat are similar in that they
>expand once you have some basic concepts. He thought this was valuable
>because you can continue to teach yourself rather than having to rely on
>a teacher or a method book. So, I'll see you on the next exciting
>installment.
>
yes, an important thread among all top players I've met.
They reduce the amount of information they need to a bare minimum.
Different players will do this somewhat differently, but the basic
concept is the same.
They memorize the bare minimum amount of information and know how to quickly
derive all the rest from that.
The diminished chord paradigm seems a great way to remember and
visualize all the basic drop 2 guitar voicings.
For drop 2 voicings, there are only three chord forms on the guitar
(strings [1,2,3,4], [2,3,4,5] and [3,4,5,6](probably not so important
since it is too low to be practical in most cases).
So that reduces for practical purposes the need to only remember
two basic shapes for all the drop two chords.
For example, If I want a Cmi7 chord, I think of C7b9 (taken as
a rootless dominant consisting of Db E G Bb).
The Cmi7 can have C, Eb, G or Bb as a melody note.
I choose the form of C7b9 with the closest top melody note and
then alter it.
So if I want to play a Cm7 with a G melody note, I choose the
C7b9 chord consisting of E, Bb, Db, G and then know that shape
has to be modified by making the E->Bb and the Db->C since
Cm7 = [C, Eb, G, Bb].
My guess is that Pat takes a couple of the other diminished voicings
and does this same things.
reed
Reed Kotler
reed@justjazz.com
http://www.justjazz.com